The Brief

Los Angeles remains on shaky financial ground with increased liability costs, overspending by city departments and revenue shortfalls forcing it to dip into its reserves, according to a financial report released Wednesday.

The annual report for the fiscal year that ended in June, from Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia, said the culmination of decades of “unstable budgeting” is seen and felt by Angelenos across the city “in crumbling infrastructure and deteriorating services.”

Additionally, short-term budget balancing over the past two years resulted in unpaid furlough days for city employees and the elimination of thousands of unfilled positions.

“The service impacts of those cuts are still hitting departments as they struggle to address growing needs with severely diminished capacities,” the report read.

Key takeaways

Here are some of the major points made in the report:

• The top area of overspending continued to be liability payments. Liability claims exceeded the budget by $199 million or 228%, totaling a record of $287 million for the year. The top three areas include police at $152 million, street services at $44 million and transportation at $20 million. 

• The top area of underspending was capital improvement projects. The city only spent $25 million (19%) of the $131 million budget.

• Salaries and employee benefits increased by $162.6 million (4.7%) compared to previous  years, primarily because of cost-of-living adjustments associated with labor agreements with civilian and sworn employee unions, sworn employee hiring, increased overtime usage and higher benefit and insurance premium costs. Property taxes, which represent 40.6% of general fund revenues, increased by 4.3%. Business tax revenue increased by 8.6%, while sales tax revenues declined by 2.2%

• The city had to make up $160 million in revenue shortfall by tapping the reserve fund, which dropped from $648 million two fiscal years ago to $402 million for fiscal year 2024-25. The reserve fund currently sits at 5.06% of the total general fund budget, according to a December financial status report from the city administrative officer — barely above the 5% minimum set by the City Council.

• Four ratings agencies, including S&P, Fitch, Moody’s and Kroll, have given the city a “negative outlook” over a variety of concerns including liability payments and damages from the Palisades Fire. A negative outlook indicates a heightened risk that a city’s credit rating may be downgraded within the next 12 to 18 months. L.A. still holds an Aa2 rating from Moody’s, which is considered a high grade.

The controller issued a series of recommendations, including shifting to a two-year instead of one-year budgeting process, more realistic revenue projections, and more revenue generation by growing the tax base (for example: implementing a vacancy tax or taxing rideshare/autonomous vehicles, not just raising the sales tax).

General fund challenges

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, a member of the city’s Budget and Finance Committee, said in the report that the city can’t keep relying on short-term fixes, while “structural deficits,” like ongoing budget shortfalls, grow.

She added that “years of draining reserves, soaring liability payouts, and underinvestment in infrastructure have left us in a perilous financial position that our communities are now forced to absorb.”

“We need transparent, multi-year budgeting rooted in long-term planning and fiscal responsibility,” Hernandez said.

Mejia said that although the city is halfway through its fiscal year, it continues to have general fund budget challenges.

“The current fiscal year’s budget assumes moderate revenue growth, however, the long-term impact of current economic activities on revenue growth remains unknown and revenue has been stable during the first half of the year.”

LA’s demographics

In addition to providing a financial picture, the report provided a demographic look at the city. L.A.’s population is 3.84 million, the average age is 37.5, the total school enrollment is 409,108 and the unemployment rate is 6%.

The city employs more than 50,000 workers, the metro L.A.’s GDP is $1.3 trillion (among the top 20 economies in the world), and LAX has 75 million passengers a year.

It seems to have become part of the World Cup viewing experience: you're watching the game. Your team makes a goal. You celebrate, tentatively: because before you know it, VAR, the video assistant referee, is checking, and there's a chance the goal is getting annulled.

The ubiquitous use of VAR has been one of the great controversies at this year's World Cup. FIFA argues it's making the game fairer; many fans and teams say it's getting out of hand.
The VAR was not always the villain of soccer.
In fact, there was a time when fans and players clamored for it. It all goes back to the 2009 World Cup qualifiers, to a match between France and Ireland. Thierry Henry, a forward for France, assisted on a goal. To many, on the field and watching on TV at home, it was obvious that Henry had touched the ball with his hand. But the referee never called a foul.

This was hardly the first time that it happened: fútbol lovers will point to the infamous Argentina-England game in the 1986 World Cup, featuring a hand goal by Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona (commonly referred to as "The Hand of God"). The difference was that by 2009, the technology was available to review the play right then and there, and make a better decision.
FIFA, soccer's ruling body, is incredibly reluctant to change its rules. Up until 1970, teams weren't allowed to make substitutions. That was the same year in which red and yellow cards were introduced (previously, a referee would simply issue a warning or send a player off for bad behavior).

FIFA referee Clement Turpin watches a VAR replay screen to check for a possible penalty during the World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between Norway and England in Miami Gardens, Fla., Saturday, July 11.

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Chris Carlson

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When FIFA does intend to make a change, it often first tests it out in the U.S.
"A lot of innovations in soccer, just even putting names on the back of jerseys started in the United States," says Professor Chris Davis at Adelphi University. Davis, who studies soccer history, says American fans are typically not so caught up in soccer traditionalism and are more rapid adopters of technological change. This is how VAR came to be tested in 2014 and 2015 during Major League Soccer games.
It was officially introduced at the 2018 World Cup. Here's how it works: there's a referee crew on the field, and a separate crew watching the game on video with replays showing many angles. For the most part, Davis says, fans liked it when it was introduced. "Clear instances were being corrected, and I think that was the beauty of it: we had clear instances of protecting the integrity of the game."
Davis notes that although audiences appreciated the new technology, it wasn't used very often. Fast forward to 2026, and referees checking VAR has become ubiquitous — from reviewing potential missed fouls in the penalty area to offside.

The offside rule is over 150 years old, has 45 clauses and is around a thousand words long. It's one of soccer's most complex and misunderstood laws. It's hard to explain succinctly, but here is a shot: the law states that a player is offside when in the opponent's half of the field, and closer to the opponent's goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent. It matters where the player is when the ball is struck, and whether they're involved in active play. It's designed to prevent lingering around the opponent's goal to make an easy score.

In this World Cup, referees have often stopped the match on multiple occasions to check VAR for offside, sometimes issuing rulings that fans and teams consider ludicrous.

Ehsan Hajisafi #3 of Iran protests to referee Dario Herrera after a VAR review disallowed an Iranian goal during a World Cup match against Belgium on June 21 in Inglewood, Calif.

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Consider the Iran match against Belgium, in which an Iranian goal was taken away because VAR determined an Iranian player's butt was offside. A few days later, a Colombian goal was annulled when an attacker's toe was offside.
"It is completely interrupting what the game state is", says Felipe Cardenas, senior writer with The Athletic. "One of the best and most special moments in a football match is a goal and the goal celebration. Now there are times when the players have to wait until the referee gets the right decision and he hears from the VAR."
VAR is at the center of one of the most controversial games in this Cup: Egypt vs. Argentina.
A recap: for most of the game, Egypt dominated. They scored a second goal in the 67th minute. The VAR pointed to a questionable foul that had happened in the lead-up to that goal, all the way across the field. The referee reviewed the video, and disqualified Egypt's goal. Argentina went on to win. Later, Egypt complained and said they were robbed during the World Cup. The whole incident led to further questioning of so much technology in the tournament, and whether it's being deployed properly.
At the end of the day, the debate over the use of VAR and technology in soccer echoes many conversations happening in society today: where is the line between tech helping and going too far? If the technology is being handled by humans, is there not an inherent bias?
Cardenas says he thinks the answer lies somewhere in the middle. "As fútbol fans, you should live with human error at times. It's OK for a referee to make a mistake. We're getting to the point where it is taboo if a referee makes a mistake."
In other words, sometimes you just have to accept the referee's decision. No ands, butts… or toes.
Copyright 2026 NPR

As triple-digit temperatures bake some parts of California, two new laws aim to help educate students about heat illness and protect them from it.

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that will require the state Board of Education to consider teaching students about the symptoms of heat illness in schools. Another law, which the governor signed in 2024 with a key deadline this month, requires schools to come up with rules for outdoor activities when there are extreme weather events like heat waves.

Both are promising, low-cost measures. But neither requires the state to spend money on the things that experts say would actually make schools safer: updated HVAC, shade structures, a funded health curriculum. The governor's office says as of now it has no plans to propose funding for an updated health framework.

The laws “demonstrate that children in California are already being harmed by extreme heat,” said Sarah Matsumoto, director of policy and government affairs for Green Schoolyards America. “It's not a future problem anymore. There definitely needs to be a comprehensive plan to protect children from extreme heat.”

A student’s experience becomes law

In 2022, during a record-breaking, triple-digit heat wave in Sacramento, the air conditioning in Natalie Rubio’s school cafeteria gave out. She was in the fourth grade; she and her classmates had to eat lunch outside.

Now 13, Natalie recalls some of her peers feeling sick – flushed with red cheeks and headaches, symptoms of heat illness. She brought her experience, and her idea for a bill promoting heat education, to the legislature: Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Palmdale Republican, wrote Assembly Bill 1653.

Adding guidance on how to teach heat illness in schools is a “simple, common-sense step,” Lackey said in a legislative hearing about the bill.

“This bill creates no mandates,” said Lackey. “It simply promotes awareness and prevention. Because sometimes the most powerful way to protect our students is by giving them the knowledge to protect themselves.”

Heat illness is a growing concern for students, parents and educators as heat waves become stronger and longer. In California, 618 children ages 5 to 17 went to the emergency room in 2024 because of heat illness, according to Tracking California, a health surveillance tool by the Public Health Institute. That’s about a 30% jump from the previous year.

California students lost more than 40,000 hours of instructional time in the 2025-26 school year due to closures and disruptions from extreme heat, according to data collected by UndauntedK12. Extreme heat accounted for 73% of weather-related school closures in the fall semester.

Natalie envisions short, interactive lessons tailored to each grade level and reminders during heat waves. “I want schools to teach every student the signs and symptoms of heat illness and how to respond in a memorable way,” the middle school student said.

Lackey’s law doesn't guarantee new lessons — that depends on when the state next updates its health education framework, which last happened in 2019.

The Board of Education could incorporate heat illness lessons into its health education framework – a voluntary guide for teaching about subjects including nutrition, physical activity, drugs and alcohol and mental health – the next time it considers updates. But there's no further update scheduled, and doing so again “must be initiated and funded by the legislature.” Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for the governor, referred questions about whether the administration would fund a new framework to the education board. The board did not respond to CalMatters’ questions by deadline.

Stephanie Seidmon, a project manager for UndauntedK12, said the nonprofit educational advocacy group supported the law “because this is a potentially low-cost solution in a time when our state budget is (limited).”

If an eventual update does include heat illness education, it could make a real difference in the number of kids that end up in the nurse’s office with serious symptoms, said Rosemarie Dowell, government relations committee chair for the California School Nurses Organization.

Students “might not realize that this headache or this dizziness might not just be feeling tired but could be a sign of heat illness,” Dowell said. “That can empower them to react for themselves, react for somebody else, to encourage them to get water, to find that shade or to tell an adult.”

A push for more protections

The state Department of Education offers no official guidance on how hot is too hot for students to be outside, or how teachers should respond to unusually high temperatures. The department refers schools to a list of resources, including the state health department’s guidance on extreme heat, defined as longer than two days and nights.

Nationally, an estimated 9,000 high school athletes suffer from and receive treatment for exertional heat illness every year, with most incidents occurring in the month of August. The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports, sets and can enforce heat-related policies, including rules about practice times and hydration breaks for student athletes.

Senate Bill 1248, authored by Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Bakersfield Democrat, requires schools to adopt protocols for outdoor activities, such as sports practice and recess, during extreme weather. This includes setting criteria for when schools should cancel outdoor activity. The death of 12-year-old Yahshua Robinson, who in August 2023 collapsed and died during P.E. class in Lake Elsinore, prompted that law.

The law requires schools to develop heat-safety plans that include monitoring weather forecasts, designating safe indoor alternatives to outdoor activities, and training staff to recognize heat stress, among other measures. The law required schools to have those plans ready by July 1 of this year.

In a legislative hearing in 2024, Yahshua’s mother said her son died following dangerous school rules.

“It was in the nineties outside that day, and even the best and highly trained athletes wouldn't run in it,” she said. “Yet Yahshua's class of middle schoolers were made to run in that heat. Physical education should happen only in environments conducive for physical activity.”

The funding gap that laws don’t touch

School and environmental advocates want state leaders to go further by investing in better cooling systems and more shady areas for children to play. But limited state and school funding stands in the way.

“Many of our school buildings were built before the era of extreme heat fueled by climate change,” Seidmon said. “Our kids are playing on playgrounds, in schoolyards and on fields that don't have shade ... So it's critical that our school buildings and grounds protect our children from extreme heat.”

Emily Penner, an associate professor of education at UC Irvine, is researching the effects of heat exposure on school children and how schools are adapting to warmer days. Response, she’s learning, varies widely by region — schools that have long struggled with extreme heat are more likely to try new approaches, such as using more heat-resilient materials for playgrounds and prioritizing air conditioning in school buses.

Adaptation efforts like shading infrastructure and HVAC in most schools can make a significant difference, Penner says. At the same time, these projects require funding that many schools may not have.

“This is a case where we have some pretty concrete things we know we need to do, like put HVAC at most schools across the state, and now we have to kind of figure out how to marshal political support for something like that,” Penner said.

Money on the table, but not enough

Even where funding exists, schools are finding it hard to secure or insufficient to meet the need. In 2020, the legislature created a state program, known as CalShape, funded by utility ratepayers, which has helped schools pay for assessments and upgrades to their air conditioning systems. But the program administrator, the California Energy Commission, abruptly paused applications in 2024, citing budget constraints. The state will return the leftover $200 million to investor-owned utilities if the Legislature doesn't act by the end of the year.

In 2024, Californians voted to approve Proposition 2, a bond measure that earmarks $10 billion for school facilities. But school modernization projects already demand more than  the funding provides.

Voters also approved Proposition 4, which sends another $10 billion to climate projects statewide. That includes $50 million for the state’s Urban Forestry Program, which funnels money to local projects that add green space, including in schools.

“Compared to the federal government and many states, California is one of the leaders in this issue,” Matsumoto said. “And we are still not collectively meeting the moment.”

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A nonprofit law firm has created a resource to teach people who are in custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, or at the neighboring Desert View Annex, how to challenge their detainment.

Available in English and in Spanish, the information packet walks immigrant detainees through the process of filling out their own petitions for habeas corpus.

“Habeas corpus” means “you have the body” in Latin. In the U.S., this writ refers to a judicial order that forces authorities to bring the person they’ve detained before a federal district court and justify their continued confinement.

This provision — enshrined in Section 9 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution — is a safeguard against arbitrary imprisonment.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center created its resource for people who meet two criteria:

1. The petitioner has an open case in immigration court or a pending appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals.
2. The petitioner was previously detained and released by immigrant officials. 

Once immigrant officials release a detainee — once they decide that the person in question is not dangerous and does not pose a flight risk — “they can't just arrest you again without proof of any change in circumstance,” said Sarah Houston, managing attorney of the law firm’s rapid response team.

An LAist investigation recently found that more immigrants are being held in detention without bond, and the increase in denials is steepest at Adelanto. Plus, given reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at Adelanto, along with a surge in deaths at ICE detention facilities across the country, Houston said her team is acting out of a sense of urgency.

“We don't want anyone to sit in detention for months and months, when they could potentially be drafting this and getting out,” she said.

How this resource helps immigrant detainees

Immigrant Defenders Law Center is based in downtown L.A. Each week, their attorneys make the trek to the long-term detention facilities in Adelanto, out in the Mojave desert.

“We have a great network [of pro bono and low bono lawyers],” Houston said, “but there is no way we have enough attorneys to meet the needs of [scores of detainees].”

At the same time, she added, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California was getting inundated with petitions for habeas corpus — so much so that it made a form for detainees who opt to represent themselves. In the legal world, self-representation is referred to as “pro se.”

Meanwhile, Houston and her team kept hearing about people who’d been re-detained at Adelanto. In response, they created their resource for these “pro se” litigants.

The nonprofit’s 24-page resource contains detailed instructions on how to file a petition for habeas corpus, but it’s meant to be uncomplicated, Houston said. When creating it, the law firm’s goal was to “make it as clear as possible,” while mitigating the possibility that petitioners might make a mistake.

Before sharing the resource widely, the law firm identified one detainee for a test case. A judge decided the government was holding that person in custody illegally. Then, another detainee used the resource to secure his release and that of five others, Houston said.

Now, when her team goes to Adelanto, they take packets of the resource with them to distribute widely among detainees.

“Our clients are so intelligent and so resourceful, and they will do anything to go back to their families,” she said. “Our job is to give them as much information as possible for them to be able to draft the best habeas.”

What happens if a petitioner makes an error?  

Even with detailed instructions, Houston acknowledged, detainees who file habeas corpus petitions “sometimes do make mistakes.” As a result, their petition might get rejected, forcing the detainee to refile. But in Houston’s experience, courts tend to be more lenient when people are representing themselves.

“If it's a minor error, they'll just go forward with it,” she said.

Under the second Trump administration, petitions for habeas corpus have skyrocketed.

A ProPublica report found that immigrants filed more of these petitions in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration than in the past three administrations combined — including President Donald Trump’s first. In parts of California and Texas, these petitions have been especially prevalent.

Houston underscored that the resource her team created is specifically geared at people who are both detained at Adelanto and who meet the criteria she outlined.

Habeas corpus is “so complicated that you can't make a resource like this for every type of person,” she said. “We wanted to start off where we know exactly what the case law is, where it's pretty clear cut.”

The law firm is currently working on translating the resource, to ensure it’s available to immigrants who speak other languages.